My mum
06.12.05, 12:28 am

I am so scared about posting all of this. Completely terrified.

I have a sudden need to write about my mum, to get stuff out of my head. These thoughts have been floating around in there for a long time now. I�m not quite sure if this is a good idea at all.

In case anyone isn�t aware, my mum died of lung cancer when I was 13, on the 13th January 1999. I sometimes wonder if she was gutted that she missed the millennium. She didn�t smoke; she had bowel cancer originally, which was operated on and followed up with chemo, but the cancer came back a year later, only this time in her lungs. They found a shadow on her scan. Once the shadow was found she battled for 6 more months. It spread to her spine, and probably other places too. She couldn�t walk far after a while, then couldn�t walk at all, then couldn�t move without being in agony. Eventually she moved into the hospital full-time, about a week before maybe.

They told me two days before the 13th that it was terminal, and that she was going to die. I was so crazily na�ve, 13 years old and stupidly na�ve, just relying on the fact that everything�d be fine, because it had to be. My gran told me and my sister - my dad had wanted to but couldn�t, so she did. She sat us both down on my parents� bed and held both of our hands, and as she said the words it firstly felt like I�d been slapped in the face� the crazy hard shocking truth of it all because she was always meant to get better, I�d never even imagined anything else. It had never crossed my mind that she wasn�t going to come out of the other end. And as my gran carried on talking I just grew numb, and her voice became really quiet, and it felt like I had hardly any feeling in my body anymore.

Eventually she stopped, and asked something stupid like, �Are you okay?� And my sister said that she was, because she�d had already known, and NO ONE HAD EVER TOLD ME HOW SERIOUS IT ALL WAS. I think I said something like, �I want to be on my own�, and I tried to run out of the room but my gran grabbed hold of me and wouldn�t let me leave, and then I just started to cry. I don�t think I�ve cried like that since, it was just utterly broken helpless sobbing that probably only lasted about five minutes but felt like it lasted for hours. Since then I�ve always controlled everything that I do, including when I lose it.

I didn�t cry when they told me that she�d died. I knew it was coming because I was walking home from the bus stop, and I saw my gran standing outside my house, waiting for me. As soon as she saw me she went back into the house and I knew, I just knew. My dad sat me on his lap and told me and cried, and I just sat there, feeling numb.

I can�t remember what her voice sounded like; I forgot that years and years ago. She wrote me a small letter whilst she was ill, and it ends with, �All my love darling, mum xx�. I�ve kept it all these years, even though it�s written on a yellow post-it note that�s no longer sticky, and I took it to uni with me. It�s currently in one of my drawers, under a load of socks. Coming to uni has started to make me realise just how much I�ve missed out on. When a housekid has a big problem, the first thing they do is ring their mum. I can�t do that, I can�t ring anybody because me and my dad don�t have that kind of relationship, and my sister�s so different to me that she never understands. So I just kind�ve suck it up and get on with things.

She was the most fantastic person. She couldn�t sing a note in tune, and used to belt out Angels whilst messing around in the kitchen. She always argued with my gran over who was going to pay for things, she�d drive me to my piano lessons every week and she used to get me to try out her dyslexic worksheets before she gave them to the kids she taught. She always reassured me that everything was going to be fine, no matter what the problem.

I hate it. I hate that I�ve lost out on so much and that I�m the way I am now because of it. I know there�s no point banging on about how unfair it all is, because life doesn�t give a shit. I hate how I hardly let anyone in because I�ve had so much crapness in my past, with my mum and Bernie and our money worries and my dad�s depression that terrified me so much, and I don�t want to have to go through it again or even think about it, because I�ve managed to ignore how much it all hurts. And if I thought about it all properly I�d realise how painful it actually was, and still is, and then I�d probably just fall apart. So I never ever talk about my mum, not even in an everyday, superficial way, not because I don�t care but because I�m worried about what it might let out.

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